THEMES

The life story approach to oral history often begins with childhood. For some of our interviewees, youth coincided with the birth of an independent Ceylon, renamed Sri Lanka in the1972 Constitution. Others came of age during periods of communalconflict or war. In each case, their stories vividly recall the ebb and flow of daily life in a close-knit Jaffna village or in the bustle of the capital in Colombo.

When Britons arrived in Sri Lanka in the 18th Century, landing, as many
tourists do now, on its coastal shores before carving a path deep into its
lush, green geographic centre of Kandy, they were following a well-worn
trail to the country opened up as early as 1505 by Portuguese and Dutch
colonists.

As the mass migration away from Sri Lanka grew, Tamil life spread to many
places, including Germany, Norway, Denmark, the UK, Canada, Australia and
the USA. This type of experience is often referred to as diaspora.

Through the generations finds its resting place on the idea of home.For our speakers, home may be a place in the past, the present or the
future, in the imagination or in the physical comfort of community or
family, in Britain, Sri Lanka, a homeland in the North and East of
Sri Lanka or somewhere else entirely.